


blades of nerium, shrouded in shadows

by lycheemoon



Series: ebony knives snaked in washed out flame [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Assassin!Zuko, Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, disregarding comics in general, i mean if you squint real hard but it's not really that hard, please look at top notes for content warnings, yes i fit assassin!zuko into the canon timeline whatcha gonna do about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28174599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lycheemoon/pseuds/lycheemoon
Summary: Zuko is seven when his mother first introduces him to the concoction of deadly poisons.(The palace sits on an intricately woven, fragile foundation of backstabbing snake-eyed councilmen; disloyal, mistreated servants who turn at a thumb of silver; cold-hearted royals wreathed in red and gold flames.Knowing how to slip nerium oleander into a nobleman’s stash of richly sweet sake, or learning the most effective mixtures of crushed herbs that ends in a boneless corpse at the rise of dawn won’t hurt the children raised by war.)She demonstrates more than once.or: ursa teaches him poisons, piandao teaches him swords, ozai teaches him silence, and azulon takes advantage.
Relationships: Lu Ten & Zuko, Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Piandao & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: ebony knives snaked in washed out flame [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064036
Comments: 40
Kudos: 377





	blades of nerium, shrouded in shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheTurtleduckPond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTurtleduckPond/gifts).



> concept expansion in end notes.
> 
> cw: murder commited by a nine year old, child abuse (which is practically a given with zuko), vaguely referenced r/pe in section vi. if i’m missing any warnings/tags please let me know in the comments!

**i.**

Zuko is seven when Ursa first introduces him to the concoction of deadly poisons.

“Look,” she says in the green thistles beyond the palace, pointing at a deep amethyst berry in tall whorls of spilling emerald vines. “That’s scopolia japonica. Don’t touch it,” she adds sharply, gently grabbing his hand as he reaches out. “Remember the Dark Water Spirit from _Love Amongst the Dragons?_ ” He nods. “Well, he used it to kill the princess.”

(That wasn’t inherently irrefragable, but Ursa knows the play well, and knows her poisons even better.)

Zuko frowns. “What do you mean?”

_(She sits with rolled sleeves and unrolled indifference to watch dilated wide-blown eyes terrified of an illusion not present; jittery liquid limbs shaking from the inside out; shuddering heartbeats, coming in loud gasps for air —)_

“Some people know how to take dangerous plants and put them in others’ drinks,” Ursa answers cryptically.

(Being cryptic has never sated her son’s curiosity — not when he asked where her parents were, and not when he asked why her nails were stained dark black and blue.)

He brightens visibly. “Do you know how to do that?” he asks eagerly.

Ursa regards his muss of remarkably unkempt black hair and trusting canary eyes, open and without cunning. _How much longer will it be before my knowledge turns foul?_ “Yeah. I do.” She pokes him in the ribs, and he swats at her hands, giggling like a child who hasn’t been poisoned by the far deadlier roots of war. “That’s a secret though, little turtleduck, alright?”

Zuko nods vigorously. “Okay, Mom,” he assures, settling next to her to look up at the edged spines of belladonna. “Can you… can you show me how?”

(The palace sits on an intricately woven, fragile foundation of backstabbing snake-eyed councilmen; disloyal, mistreated servants who turn at a thumb of silver; cold-hearted royals wreathed in red and gold flames.

Passing on her family’s maternal roots have never hurt those under their tutelage, after all.)

She shows him.

  
**ii.**

Ursa doesn’t stop there.

Ozai promised to treat Zuko as if he weren’t his own son. He’s made good on that promise.

Knowing how to slip nerium oleander into a nobleman’s stash of richly sweet sake, or learning the most effective mixtures of crushed herbs that ends in a boneless corpse at the rise of dawn won’t hurt the children raised by war.

When fire doesn’t flare from his too-small hands and tall men don’t instill an intrinsic danger in his too-young mind, she takes him beyond the Caldera’s dipping crater to the sage grasses that spread across the island surface, bringing bowls and vials and brushes of ink. She speaks in tones that reminisce of sun-washed days in thatched village huts rather than the harsh words uttered on cold marble floors, and talks about vivid pink blooms that induce violent convulsions and draping violet flowers that burn unsuspecting tongues (and never about the unreachable, tenderhearted mother who taught her).

For nearly a year, she teaches her son the art of toxic plants and the craft of subtle poisons, and he soaks it up with an eagerness he doesn’t show towards the lessons that matter to his father.

She demonstrates more than once.

  
**iii.**

Azula doesn’t like it when Zuko starts talking about the things Mother teaches him, but he’s never been sharp enough.

(Mother doesn’t like her. She knows that, and she does _not_ care.)

“Hemlock is one of the worst ways to go, even though it doesn’t grow here,” Zuko informs his sister bluntly as they wander the red-strewn halls of the palace, excitement barely contained beneath his skin. “It makes your muscles really weird, and then you can’t breathe, and sometimes you go into a coma, and then you die.”

Azula rolls her eyes — she may be seven years old, but she certainly knows that talking about exotic plants is stupid. “Maybe you should learn to use your firebending instead of dumb plants to make people die,” she suggests scathingly.

Zuko makes a face. “Plants are cool,” he insists, affronted. “Like, torikabuto’s flowers are so pretty, but it also stops your heart if you eat it —”

She tunes out her brother’s obsessive ramblings and turns her sharp gaze to pick at her fingernails, and doesn’t notice the Fire Lord’s presence.

  
**iv.**

That summer, Lu Ten grabs Zuko’s unburnt hand, tells him to pack his bags, and takes him off the capital island and into the archipelagos of the Fire Nation.

His whole world looks a lot smaller as he sits on the peak of the crater, glimmering azure rolling too close and legs hugged tightly to his chest. The island is an expanse of green crests, dipping and trailing up to the rim of the volcano he’s lived in for all his life; it looks like the raised maps in Father’s office, the infinitely diminutive models that look like he could cup it in his hands like a fragile globe of pulled glass — like it could shatter from a single impact. Like he could kindle it with a lick of red flame, and it’d burn the city to the ground and travel down the hills and burn to ashes in seconds, even when he can’t see the fog-obscured ends of the far isles.

Eventually, Lu Ten calls up to the stupidly high rock, and he scrambles down, touching the ground lightly and grabbing the bag from his cousin’s outstretched hand.

“Where are we going?” he asks when they’re kilometers from civilization, trekking across the boundless knolls and past the shade trees and hidden alcoves his mother had brought him to.

Lu Ten grins down at him, all bright and unafraid. “I’m taking you on summer vacation! I invited Azula, but she didn’t want to come,” he adds, wilting a little. “But it’s a surprise, okay?”

Zuko abruptly stops in his tracks, alarmed. “‘Summer vacation’?” he echoes. “I’m not allowed to go on vacation, Lu Ten.” _Father’s going to kill me —_

His older cousin waves dismissively, reaching down to ruffle his hair. “I say you can go on summer vacation, and Dad said it was fine.” He leans down conspiratorially, and whispers, “And I might’ve lied to _your_ dad a bit, too.”

(Zuko bites back his protest to the consequences of lying to his father. Lu Ten is, after all, not a failure in spite of his inability to bend, and Uncle would never be disappointed in him.)

Instead, he just says, “Okay.”

\---

(Zuko carefully extracts bunches of coriaria japonica on the way to this undisclosed place. Lu Ten is a formidable swordsman, but being safe has never hurt him.)

\---

The massive estate looms above his head, all towering white walls and writhing green shrubbery.

Lu Ten strides up to the gold-ingrained gates, raises the lion-faced knocker, and knocks twice. Zuko shifts uncomfortably on his feet at the ensuing lack of response, fighting the urge to flatten himself against the bulwarks and will himself into the shadows.

Eventually, they’re greeted by a stony-faced butler who takes one look at the teen and not-teen standing at the hem, sighs, and gestures towards expansive rock pooled gardens, with no further address than “Master Piandao will be pleased to see you”. (The pieces click in Zuko’s mind — this is Lu Ten’s _sword place.)_ At the second barrier — that being, the equally lavish double doors engraved with what look like Pai Sho tiles —, the interlude is significantly shorter than the former, swinging open before their escort can prompt the owner.

In contrast to Fat, the man who greets them is tall and slim, clad in similarly black and gold robes. His eyes carry an unspoken, dire weight that the butler’s don’t. Zuko swallows back his squawk of surprise.

“Master Piandao!” Lu Ten surges forward to meet the tall man in a hug. “It’s good to see you again.”

Zuko stares on in bewilderment. Why is the swordmaster reciprocating the arm tangle? (Father said hugs are for sentimental fools.)

“It’s good to see you as well, Lu Ten.” Master Piandao smiles, then his eyes land on Zuko, who falls to an immediate standstill. “And who’s this?”

“My little cousin, Zuko. I invited him for the summer.” There’s a momentary pause, then he adds, softer, “He’s Ursa’s.”

Piandao’s eyes widen nearly imperceptibly at his mother’s name, but Zuko has been raised to be attuned to the slightest change of expression (for the very cardinal conduction of diplomacy, not for safety in fire-radiant halls), and he feels another spike of caution run up his back. “I see,” he finally says evenly. “It’s nice to meet you, Prince Zuko.”

He turns back to Lu Ten, and a silent message that Zuko can’t decipher seems to pass between them. “Well?” he says, eyes twinkling. “Come to brush up your skills?”

Lu Ten bares his teeth in a way that seems so much lighter than it does when he’s at home. “Spirits, yeah.”

\---

Zuko might not trust Master Piandao, but he likes watching him spar with his older cousin.

“Excellent form!” the man exclaims as he sidesteps with easy agility, darting forward and met by a sweeping block. Neither look particularly winded as they dance smoothly around one another, swords sending resounding clangs reverberating around the courtyard. “You’re getting faster.”

_(Why is he praising his opponent?)_

Lu Ten doesn’t pause to preen and pivots, maneuvering his blade in a flourish that nearly yanks his partner’s from his fingertips. Mere moments later, Lu Ten is disarmed and has his hands in the air. Anxiety coursing through his veins, Zuko starts forward, before he realizes that his cousin is… grinning?

“Good one, old man,” Lu Ten says, hands still raised in surrender. Piandao raises an eyebrow, and the former visibly deflates. “Yes, we already knew I wasn’t going to win, but it was worth a shot.”

Piandao drops his sword at that proclamation and sheathes it in a smooth movement that Zuko is instantly jealous of.

(Father says swords are for the weak, non-benders, and that firebenders should never stoop so low as to learn pointless weapons of steel, because their flame and fist is always enough.

Azula would never bother with swords, because she’s already perfect.

If his weapon of firebending has never been enough, would learning the weapon of non-bending at least make him acceptable in Father’s eyes?

He doesn’t let _‘Nothing will ever be good enough’_ cross his mind, because one day he’ll be enough, he just has to work harder, and be better, and —)

“Maybe one day,” the swordmaster is saying.

\---

Zuko works up the courage to ask the next day, after he and Lu Ten are escorted into two of sixteen unoccupied bedrooms and he lays awake in a moonlit blanket-strewn forgein bed.

(It’s not because he thinks swords are cool, it’s _not._ If he’s going to be here the whole summer, he might as well acquire a new life skill, so Father can’t punish him for being useless and lazy and unproductive when he’s supposed to be fixing his unacceptable firebending.)

He doesn’t ask Lu Ten if it’s okay to learn the sword, because if he does, he might back out.

“Master Piandao,” he begins, bowing respectfully beneath filtered shafts of honey-lit beams. “I — uh —” (He can feel his father’s hand pressing into his smoldering shoulder). “I would like to request to learn the art of the sword under your tutelage. Sir — Master.” (The scent of charred hair drifts in the windless corridors.)

Piandao hums, not looking up from where his brush dances across the blossoming scroll. “And what makes you certain that you are worthy, boy?”

His mind shutters to a blank.

 _(You’ll always be a disgrace, a failure; look at you, unable to perform dragon katas that Azula perfected months ago. You were lucky to be born._ Nothing’s ever been enough, has it? He supposes learning the sword wouldn’t even be a viable option to compensate, because he isn’t even good enough to learn it.)

“Nothing,” he finally admits. “I — I’m sorry. For wasting your time. I’ll, uh, I’ll go now. Sorry.” His tongue stumbles ahead of his hazy mind, and he curses his uncourteous language. (It’s not just singed hair; now it’s singed wrists and bruises and singed _words —)_

Piandao’s hand halts. “I will consider training you, should you prove to follow my teachings properly. Let us begin at dawn tomorrow.”

Zuko struggles to suppress the smile trying to squirm across his features.

\---

The dual blades come naturally.

Zuko paints rivulets of silver waters rushing down sculpted clay rocks and strokes poised calligraphy in swirling black ink and learns to balance a curved wood blade with both his right and his left hands; and so logically, when it comes down to swords, he’s given two.

(“Why’d you give him _two_ swords?” Lu Ten asks, looking mildly mortified as his cousin presses one into Fat’s stomach and levels the other at his face.

Piandao shrugs, as if it were obvious. “It’s a dangerous world. Having an extra blade won’t hurt.”)

Swords aren’t like fire. They are not alive — they don’t flicker and pulse and spread like the angry flames that ravage the lands (that is never enough, never enough, never _enough)_ and foster burnt skin. They are cool and graceful, slicing through the air like spinning fans, crescendoing and dipping waves of ice.

(Piandao is more impressed than he’s willing to let on. He himself has never been able to dual wield beyond competency.

Then again, his left arm is not a constellation scattered with stars of blackened fingerprints.)

The rough hilts of two evenly matched practice swords digging into his palms feel like a tangible globe of pulled glass cupped between his fingers.

\---

He whirls and kicks and sweeps flamelessly across the garden of rocky vegetation, gales rustling through his ruffled phoenix plume as he whistles back through the wafting wisteria wind.

(Master Piandao never hurts him, and he doesn’t really know how to feel about that. He still carries his coriara a little closer than comfort and more often than not, but he can feel his carefully crafted intrinsicity of danger slowly melting away in the presence of the swordmaster.

“You’ll be excellent at the dual dao,” Piandao tells him one night as they sit in his office, bowls of untouched udon settled between them.

Zuko flushes, and doesn’t respond. _He’s just trying to get under your guard_ , Azula’s voice whispers, wreathing smoke in his ears.

“We’re approaching the end of summer,” Piandao continues, chopsticks nonchalantly weaving through noodles. “I’d like to help you forge your blades before then.”

“Oh,” is all he can manage. He picks up his own chopsticks, but ignores the meal, because he hasn’t done enough today, and he can eat tomorrow.

The swordmaster unsubtly nudges the bowl closer.

“You’ve been an extraordinary student,” Piandao informs him, blunter than their practice blades. “I’m proud of your progress.”

At this point, he really can’t deny that he’s being praised, despite the cautions heeding in his head. A warm, bubbly feeling spreads in his heart, and he wonders if this is the kind of thing his tutors are supposed to say to him, because fuzzy words feel a lot nicer than stinging wrists.

“Thank you, Master,” he says, _not_ choking on his words.)

He stands over Lu Ten, dull blades crossed deliberately at the older teen’s throat, and feels so, so _alive._

\---

(He doesn’t let himself think about what it means to have prevailed over Lu Ten, proclaimed swordmaster.)

\---

Master Piandao helps him forge his blades.

The furnace swelters with stifling heat, filling the half-open courtyard with its blazing billowed presence. Zuko clings to the handle that’s a bit too tall for him, stoking the fire with his own red flame (because Piandao said that he should craft them using his own fire, even though it’s red and quivering and flickers too much).

When he’s done and the inferno clears, he wraps the hilts in dark silk cord, braiding the strands in the style that he used to do for Azula’s raven hair. It’s a familiar action that he hasn’t done for a long time, but it feels like he’s putting a part of his sister into these immensely personal swords, even if he knows that it’s sentimental and that all it’d do is evoke sneers from his family.

Lu Ten waits somewhere beyond the estate, patient to bring him back to the palace, and Piandao waits right at the gate. Zuko swallows, running a finger over the sharp edge of the sword and wondering how its dangerous point hurts less than his own fire, then casts his eyes where the tall, dark-robed figure stands. His feet don’t wait for him to finish overthinking.

He reaches the gate, where arms tug him into a hug. Zuko nearly flinches away, but then allows himself to dissolve into its warmth, because it’s a waxen candle and not a cradle to fire. “Thank you for teaching me, Master Piandao,” he says into the folds of black robes, face buried where the man can’t see it.

A hand comes around to the back of his head. “It was a pleasure, Zuko. You’re a better student than Lu Ten ever was.” Zuko nearly snorts with laughter at that, but it comes out as a half sob, and he brings the back of his hand to his eye, stepping away from the candle. He has to look up to meet the eyes of the elder; gold to grey — a reassurance, once of kindness, and once of pride.

“I made something for you, before you leave.” A small, cold item is pressed into Zuko’s warm palm, and he looks down at it — a silver ring. “I used the same metal as my jian.”

Zuko blinks and feels his eyes watering again, and throws himself forward, shoving his head back into the ebony. It feels a lot more like home than home ever has.

  
**v.**

When Zuko comes back from Master Piandao’s tutelage with sheathed dao swords and a polished silver ring, Ozai breaks his left arm and leaves massive hand-shaped scars trailing down his back, bone-deep fire rippling in their wake.

“Swords are for weak fools,” Ozai hisses into the boy’s ringing ear as he kneels on the black stone floor, right arm twisted backwards and pressed against his trembling body. “Let this be a lesson to your favor.”

The kindness that Piandao has so carefully cultivated into his mind during six half-moons vanishes in one half-heartbeat, and the lies slide too easily to his bleeding tongue.

The swords are confiscated. Fire Lord Azulon receives them as a gift, a sign of accordance.

(Piandao is a prodigious swordsman, rivaled by none and not to be underestimated in the face of battle. He chooses his students selectively, and chooses their weapons even more so.

Dual dao aren’t for novices.

Azulon doesn’t forget.)

  
**vi.**

Zuko is eight when Father starts coming into his room at night.

(No one heard his screams the first time; not Mother, or Azula, or the impassive-faced guards situated around midnight tresses of curtain. He’s learned to stifle the shredded noises and the stinging tears, because he said he loved him, and that was all he’d ever wanted, right?

He doesn’t know if love should hurt more than broken arms and burnt shoulders.)

If Father can’t find him before Tui falls, there’s only so much he can do under Agni’s light when the palace reawakens.

He grits his teeth and shoves down the bile rising in his throat as he clings to the wall, left arm wrenching with a whisper of pain past. He evades the extensive guard patrol, heart drumming beneath his ribs and limbs swaying to the rhythm of dappled shadows from drooping willow trees, and scrambles onto jutting curved eaves. He balances precariously on slippery, rain-washed rooftops, and learns to catch sleep under moon-watered skies.

(His skin is painted with artful intensity after the nights where he runs, but being hurt with fire is something he’s used to.)

He does this from the break of winter to the dawn of spring — steps muffled by his father’s hand, eyes and ears sharpening to the chiming call of night.

(The guards do not see him crawling with the ease of a crocospider up sweeping ruby awnings, even as he climbs higher and higher up their soaring ledges by season.

Azulon is not one of the guards. He sees the small silhouette perched before the moon, and does not remark when he passes the strikingly silent prince in the aureate corridors.)

  
**vii.**

Fire Lord Azulon sits behind a wall of gold flame, features consumed by its flickering pallor.

Prince Zuko prostrates on the ebony marbled floor, eyes fixed on the bouncing sparks in its mirrored reflection. “You requested for my presence, my Lord?”

(His grandfather does not respond, and in a haze of rawly burnt skin, he idly wonders what the punishment for this undetermined misstep will be.)

“Indeed,” Azulon’s voice drawls, slow and cold like an uncoiling viper, filling the room with its presence behind unflinching flame. “It has come to my awareness that you take special… interest in poisons.”

Zuko raises his head, opening his mouth in protest _(Mom entrusted him to keep a secret, he promised he’d keep a secret, maybe Azula was right —)_ and snapping it shut, stiffening his limbs and staring straight ahead. He doesn’t say anything, and Azulon proceeds forward.

“I’ve decided to send you to an old… _acquaintance_ of mine. You are under no circumstances to question his orders. Tomorrow, at dawn, you will be escorted to his arrangements. Is that made clear?”

 _… What?_ he thinks dumbly, and nearly says dumbly.

 _(Maybe you should learn to use your firebending instead of dumb plants to make people die_ , Azula had said.

He supposes it was always supposed to end this way.

Maybe it’ll be better than suppressed calls of terror and pain and burning beneath covers and —)

“Yes, my Lord.” His voice wavers even as he buries his confusion beneath muddled layers of sieved indifference.

Azulon stays silent for a long, long moment, and Zuko suddenly wonders if this is where it all ends. “You’ll be getting your dao back prior to departure.”

The wall of blazing flame doesn't betray any hint of satisfaction as the boy bows again, and leaves.

(People don’t question royals’ intent, and they don’t question royals’ actions, because they know the consequences. If political dissenters begin to pass in the middle of the night after the fourth in line arrives to propose negotiations — well, who in their right mind would accuse the Fire Lord of foul play?)

  
**viii.**

Hisaya eyeballs the incredibly short, nine year old firebender glaring defiantly at him. His long hair is tied back in a low ponytail befitting of the peasant class, and his clothes are mixed greys and blacks, not the opulent ruby wine befitting of royalty; a sheath is slung across his back, his hands are clenched into fists at his sides, and his legs are pressed stiffly against one another.

His gleaming gold eyes do not fixate with the same clinical precision that his grandfather’s do.

“Have you ever thrown a knife, boy?” he asks, voice dripping condescendingly.

Zuko raises his chin, not breaking eye contact. “Yes,” he responds tersely.

Hisaya flicks a silver-edged kunai from its sheath, snapping it across the courtyard and burying it to its hilt in the hollow of the blossoming cherry tree in one smooth motion. It sends a resounding thud ricocheting back to his ears, and Zuko raises an eyebrow. He procures another and tosses it right, watching the boy reflexively catch it by the hilt. “Then demonstrate.”

Zuko’s jaw twitches nearly imperceptibly, then his rigid stance shifts, flowing into a blur of motion that sends his kunai flying after its predecessor.

It buries itself half a meter above Hisaya’s throw.

Hisaya appraises the nine year old once again. “Where’d you learn that?” he says sharply.

Zuko has already returned to his unrelenting posture, hands tucked behind back and eyes cut left. “My sister’s friend likes knives.”

\---

Zuko doesn’t sleep in the small room Hisaya alloted to his single student.

He only knows this because he watches the dark room from a dark window, and sees a shadow slipping out and melting into the lulling caress of the night sky. He fades in and out of the clear horizon, untouched by the white moonlight waning across the garden. Hisaya watches him become caliginosity itself, eerie silence a resonating cessation as he drops over the wall and vanishes entirely.

He turns away.

\---

Zuko stares at the tea in front of him.

Hisaya stares at Zuko. “Well?” he demands, voice betraying no hint of apprehension. He picks up his own half-hand cup and takes a long, calculative swig, not giving two shits about how discourteous his mannerisms may seem. “It’s polite to drink your host’s tea, boy.”

Zuko’s jaw twitches, brow furrowing. “There’s wisteria seed in here. I don’t want to be vomiting all day.”

A hint of satisfaction crawls across his slated demeanor, an emotion startlingly in contrast with his typical cool detachment. “Excellent,” he says mildly, words unfeeling on his shirshu tongue. He takes another swallow from his undefiled hojicha tea, gaze never leaving the boy’s tightly wound face. “You are very correct. It truly would be a misfortune to be vomiting all day, wouldn’t it?”

He reaches over and tips the teacup, watching the cloudy brown liquid pool at his feet, around and around again, seeping into the muddy dark grass roots.

\---

“Crosne japonais,” Zuko insists, thumbing the flower with his gloved finger.

“Aconite,” Hisaya retorts, voice level.

(It never fluctuates in inflection; always, dryer than the Si Wong desert, more devoid of life than its hollow shell bones beneath sifting timeless sands.

After all, you can’t kill with the paraphernalia of humanity.)

Zuko glares back. “I’m going to eat it,” he says, with all the insufferable expression of an overconfident nine year old.

Hisaya doesn’t stop him, because he’s right.

\---

Hisaya holds grudges as closely as he holds his knives, and Azulon holds his council further than he holds his indifference.

If this sword-wielding nine year old boy of indisputable rank was given to him for “training” of unspecified form, Hisaya will be damned if he doesn’t dispose of some rivals.

Two months later, he gives the kid a vial full of clear liquid, a belt of polished shuriken, extensive outlines mapping out colossal estates, and three targets who have said a few too many words and promised a few too many threats.

“Be done with it by the end of the week,” he orders. “And don’t get caught.”

 _(Or I’ll maul your bloody corpse out of the grave and present it to your grandfather,_ he doesn’t say.)

\---

News travels fast.

Generals Ryuji, Itusko, and Masaaki have all subsequently passed away in the dead of the night under mysterious circumstances. The people whisper that the spirits are not happy with their conquest; prison silences them.

(The vial’s liquid is burned; its case shattered.

Ryuji keels over with a knife in the gut and a cauterized wound, laid to rest under privileged red silk sheets. Itusko trips over braided wiring and plants into finely powdered dust on his cold marble floors, ill the next morning and festeringly dead by nightfall before his prideful rich plunder. Masaaki slips into delirium and spasming muscles, and allegedly left Agni’s light to drown himself underneath the luminescence of Tui herself.

The people are not inherently wrong.)

Hisaya’s apprentice returns two hours after sundown with further slanted eyes and a newfound acquisition of carefully plastered, pococurante features.

“I did as you asked.” The rasp in his voice is more prominent than it’d been a week ago; his stock-still posture sways at its imbalanced roots, with the way the blood slithers and seethes between his toes.

As it is, the Fire Lord’s grandson may be more competent than he appears.

He dismisses the prince.

\---

The Beifong estate is almost laughably easy to get into.

(It’s _not_ breaking in if it’s not even a remotely fortified structure, even if there are _roofs_ and _hallways.)_

The juniper-eaved walls are ridiculously low — nothing like the dozen-meter high, frictionless terraces Hisaya makes him scale after being half drowned by swim practice — and lined with an impractical amount of rustling foliage, masking both sound and sight to the green-clad guards patrolling the massive mansion. He perches in the high branches of the unspilled sakura tree, lifting the vague blueprint he was provided with past blotchy shadows and into the red streaks of rapidly setting skies.

This is the most complicated spirits-damned layout he’s ever seen, and the land isn’t even a third as big as the royal palace.

(The previous day, he’d adopted threadbare peasant clothes and climbed over the same walls to steal kumquats — which were, coinciding with his key intentions, not bad at all — and inspect the estate and its interior in advance.

Of course, he was successfully caught, but since guards don’t take scraggly young kumquat thieves to rich old men’s opulent bedrooms, it doesn't help his current dilemma of trying to find the right room. Because he really, really does _not_ need the demise of a five year old noble on him.)

Zuko sighs, and freezes when a guard’s head suddenly snaps in his direction, resisting the urge to duck. The man’s eyes skit across the yard, surveying the level area (not up, because people never look up) before resuming his shift, marching through the stupidly flat grass with minutely dragging feet.

He glances at the marked map one more time before dropping out of the tree, ankles flexing to land silently on the ground, and flattens himself against the conveniently all-circumferencing wall. Hisaya told him to “make sure that insecure little bitch-faced Beifong suffers”, and so today, it’s not going to be a clean stab in the gut.

(“Gympie on his ugly grey ass,” Hisaya suggests vehemently, despite their stark lack of possession of said hypothetical plant.

“Why do you hate him so much?” Zuko asks, choosing to not concur nor deny the proposition.

Hisaya scowls. “He called me out on financial… meddling in front of the whole fucking council, and then the Fire Lord had to apprehend me for two months. The shithead started it.”)

He reaches the main house, casts one more glance around the guard patrol, and kicks off the back wall, hauling himself onto the second story’s parapet. The sun dips over the horizon, shifting something in his chi as the sky plunges into Tui’s light, and he doesn't break anything of value as he plunges into the house.

Thirteen minutes later (after skidding around demure house servants and scurrying down tapestry-draped hallways and _not_ asking for directions that he kind of really needs), he stands in Longwei Beifong’s empty chambers, flask full of crushed cicuta in his left hand.

The bed is nearly as big as his father’s, covered in finely woven gold-thread silk sheets, and it takes ages to dust the pliable mattress itself in sufficient quantities of cicuta. Zuko periodically steals furtive glances at the elaborately carved wood doors during the process, until he eventually finds his eyes catching on a hulking rack of double-looped jewelry.

And on a particularly pink, polished jade bracelet carved with badgerfrogs that he kind of really wants.

… It’s not like Hisaya has ever dissuaded him from unobtrusive looting.

(Four hours later, the insecure little bitch-faced Longwei Beifong enters his perfectly uncombed chambers. Three hours later, he is a corpse buried beneath the soil of (mostly) uncombed riches.

Zuko takes his pink badgerfrog bracelet as a souvenir from the Earth Kingdom.)

\---

Six months after Zuko is delivered to Hisaya’s doorstep, he receives a missive from the Fire Lord ordering him back home.

By now, his soul feels so empty, like it’s been drained of the black ink his father poured in its pulled glass vase. He doesn’t know when it happened — it just dripped, and dripped, and kept dripping into an unfathomable void until he felt more hollow than his wretched screams at night as he kills and kills (doing the world a justice) and watches life bleed out before his eyes.

(He doesn’t know if he really cares anymore, standing over the dead bodies who lived so much longer than he has — than he _will._

Maybe Hisaya succeeded in whatever blighted goal he had to fracture the glass and extract every last drop of scorned and scorched humanity out of him.)

He wraps the nine shuriken and three kunai in their worn leather holsters _(it’s tradition, it’s tradition, it’s tradition_ they say), braiding them in the loops he once put in Azula’s hair, fingers flying of their own accord. He shovels the dozens of black and blue tunics into a too-expensive bag that costs ten times the amount of its possessions, and cradles the frail binding holding together dozens of pages of poisonous plant concoctions so unlike the library's too-thick inked scrolls rolled into their gold embossed casing, and tugs his deadened hair into a too-royal phoenix plume that he hasn’t worn for half a year.

He doesn’t feel like he’s in his own body as he draws a dao and slices off its scratchy tips, watching the uneven lock of raven hair float to the floor and drift across the surface _(like the fallen curtain, burning, wreathed in smoke)_ , doesn’t feel like he’s in his own body as he bends down and sets it alight.

Something about ashes and loss are always so intrinsically tied together.

He shuffles into the overbearing presence of so visibly armed guards, bag slung over the shoulder where his dao should be, and he does not look back.

(If he did, he would see that Hisaya’s expression is as empty as his ink-drained soul, like it always is.)

  
**ix.**

People don’t ask where he’s been.

Zuko comes back with cold hunting eyes and hands stained flush in unshed blood, with practice of the most effective methods in disposing of a corpse twice his weight and of arranging dead limbs to look like they’d slid under the lull of fateful sleep. He comes back knowing how to snap an iron chain in half with nothing but his shoed heel without shattering all the bones in his foot first; which flipping stunts should be executed from half a dozen meters in the air, and how to land in complete silence. He comes back knowing how to throw an arrangement of knives and shurikens with precision nearing Mai’s uncanny accuracy; how to pin while avoiding the vital arteries on the human body, or how to hit them.

He is a walking, lethal weapon of war who can kill every vacuous nobleman in the palace within a night’s stand, and no one knows it.

“I missed you,” Lu Ten says when he folds Zuko into his arms that night.

(No one else says it — not Mother, not Azula; certainly not Father.)

He looks up at Lu Ten with glassy eyes, and detachedly thinks of seven different ways he could untraceably murder his cousin in these chambers. The knife situated beneath his sleeve is a scorching chill in its sheath against his skin, and the other knife buried in his boot weighs more than its throw.

“I missed you, too,” he says instead.

\---

Lu Ten and Uncle Iroh are going to war.

“Stop crying,” Azula tells him when he bursts into her room, eyes watering and words tumbling out of his mouth, a river running over throngs of jagged, bleak rocks.

“They’re leaving,” he repeats, voice hitching. “Lu Ten — and Uncle —” He cuts himself off.

(He _knows_ it’s weak, and his wrist burns. It’s been all too easy to relearn both tears and flame.)

Azula’s oak brown eyes _(like Lu Ten’s, like Uncle’s, not Mother’s —)_ narrow. “They’ll be back after they burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground.”

\---

A year and a half later, the Earth Kingdom is not burned to the ground.

Lu Ten is dead.

(They don’t come back.)

  
**x.**

When Ozai asks for a promise of the throne, Azulon knows that his son is going to make a vicious play against his father.

(The Fire Lord is not stupid. Ozai has always looked for power he couldn’t find in his own flames, after all.)

Ozai couldn’t gamble if he were already dead.

("You must learn the pain of losing your firstborn son," Azulon says.

Ozai couldn't kill his son if his son killed him first.)

“Summon Prince Zuko,” Fire Lord Azulon orders his head guard.

Might as well put his grandson’s assets to use, after all.

And if he fails? Well, nothing that a few lies wouldn’t cover up — and ultimately, the prince’s death wouldn’t be a loss; simply, a tragedy of failed patricide across generations.

\---

The head guard regrets to inform him that Prince Zuko is no where to be found.

Azulon swears the boy will pay for his insolence.

\---

Azulon doesn’t wake up the next day.

(Ozai rises from his father’s ashes, satisfied with the work of his late wife and unaware of how closely he’d brushed with his own taste of nerium oleander.)

**Author's Note:**

> credits go to [@the-turtleduck-pond](https://the-turtleduck-pond.tumblr.com) on tumblr for the whole assassin!zuko concept, some ideas of which were directly taken from their tumblr/reblogs from their posts.
> 
> so a lot of this was pretty vague/unrefined and that was kind of the point, except a few random parts, which is why i plan to write three (maybe more, if i’m hit with inspiration) more shots for this concept, all of which will be actual writing and not this weird shit. they revolve around, respectively, banishment-canon-postcanon & gaang, calligrapher piandad, and hisaya being a bitch. the latter of which includes a lot more actual ninja-ing and murder, like actual ninjas, since a lot of ninjitsu theories were nearly identically implemented in the porhuai stronghold extraction, down to half drowning. i don’t know when i’ll have those up, cuz i’m really bad about writing, but hopefully within the next year?
> 
> (edit: so uh i just comprehended the bullshit i pulled with toph's grandpa, which i'll try to fix sometime in the future, so. please don't pick on me for that hhhh)
> 
> i’m [@jade-of-mourning](https://jade-of-mourning.tumblr.com) on tumblr :>
> 
> anyway thanks for reading my bullshit i’m going to go sleep for like two days now. comments/questions give me an extra minute of z


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